


Unfinished Business

by Pond_Melody



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Established Relationship, Ethan calls Benji baby, Ethan’s internal monologue guys, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Post-Canon, they’ve been together since RN don’t @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 05:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15656865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pond_Melody/pseuds/Pond_Melody
Summary: There’s another hand he wants to hold right now, a face he hasn’t seen properly since he woke up here for the first time yesterday.(***Contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible Fallout***)





	Unfinished Business

Save for the porch light and a floor lamp in the living room, the house is dark when Ethan gets home. Benji isn’t working late tonight, Ethan knows because his car is in the driveway, but he’s always been a night owl. He wonders if he’s asleep already, or if he’ll find him huddled over his laptop. 

He discards his shoes and jacket next to the door and tiptoes up to their bedroom, just in case, and pauses at the top of the stairs. He can hear soft cries drifting down the hall, coming from their room. A nightmare, Ethan suspects. Benji is in bed, his back to the door, and yes, he’s crying softly. Ethan hurriedly takes off his pants and jacket  and god, he needs a shower, but Benji needs him first. 

“I’m here,” Ethan whispers, crawling into bed behind him, curling around him protectively. He presses a kiss to the back of Benji’s head. “I’m here, Benj.”

Ethan wraps an arm around Benji’s waist to pull him closer, and he stops. Something isn’t right.

He presses his lips to Benji’s skin this time, the back of his neck, and his skin is cold. Ethan tries to ignore the alarm bells ringing in his ears for just a moment while he pushes himself up on one arm and reaches over flick on the bedside lamp. He looks down at Benji and his heart crawls into his throat.

“Benji,” he says, his voice shaking. He pushes himself to his knees, pushes Benji’s shoulder down so that he’s on his back instead of his side. “Oh my god, Benji.”

Benji’s lips are blue, no, his whole face is blue. Ethan is certain that he’s not breathing, but he feels for breath anyway with his cheek, _nothing,_ feels his throat for a pulse, _nothing,_ ear on his chest and praying for a weak heartbeat, _y_ _ou’re wasting time._

There are no tears on Benji’s face. He couldn’t have been crying, not when he’s been laying here like this for god knows how long, and Ethan realizes the tearful whimpers he heard, still hears, have been coming from him this whole time.

“Stay with me, Benji,” he grinds out while he scrambles for his phone, _call 9-1-1, lay him on the floor -_

He shoves his arms beneath Benji, whose body is now crumbling before his eyes. 

“No, what the hell? No!”

He watches, stricken, tries desperately to hold on, but Benji is crumbling to dust, he’s slipping right through his fingers and - 

* * *

Ethan wakes with a gasp

He’s in a - bed? He’s in bed. It’s not his bed, Benji is not here, and he feels his heart begin to pound even harder while his throat tightens.

“Hey, it’s alright.” He knows that voice, he doesn’t need to turn his eyes to her to figure it out, but he does anyway. Ilsa.

He remembers now, laying down on the cliff and waking up in the field hospital, Julia coming to see him, and then Ilsa, all while Benji hung back. She must have stayed, sat with him even after he’d fallen asleep.

“You’re shaking,” she murmurs, reaching out and taking his hand in her own. He’s taken aback for a moment by how lovely she really is, but there’s another hand he wants to hold right now, a face he hasn’t seen properly since he woke up here for the first time yesterday.

“Where-um,” Ethan stumbles, and then tries again. “I haven’t seen Benji.” 

Well, that technically wasn’t true. He had _seen_ him. They’d exchanged words, even, and at the time, knowing that he was alive had been more than enough. Now he needs to know that he’s okay. 

She smiles warmly, gives his hand a squeeze. “He’s around. I’ll find him.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs after her. He tries not to fidget, tries to calm the panic rising in his chest. Benji is alive, they both are; no nightmare is going to change that. Ethan forces himself to breathe slowly, deeply as he can. Benji ducks into the tent some minutes later, his forehead etched with concern.

“Hi,” he greets. “Do you need anything?”

Ethan reaches out, needs to feel Benji’s skin as soon as possible, even if the difference is only half a step. “Just you. C’mere.”

Benji hangs back, just like before, and doesn’t say anything. In fact, he looks uncomfortable. Ethan frowns. Is he afraid of something? “Come here, baby.”

Benji nods, hesitant still, but he takes a few steps toward Ethan, and then a few more, until he’s standing next to him. Ethan reaches for him eagerly, ignoring the twinge in his ribs.

“Hi,” he says softly, resting a hand on Benji’s cheek, and it’s then that he sees the marks: Thick, purple bruises, a little higher on his throat than Ilsa’s rope burns had been but much deeper, much worse. His eyes widen ever so slightly as he begins to connect the dots. 

He lowers his hand from Benji’s cheek to his neck, calloused fingertips lightly brushing against mottled skin, only lifting them away when he inhales sharply. He lifts his eyes to meet Benji’s.

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” he assures Ethan. It’s pointless, Benji knows, he can’t even look him in the eye when he says it, but he tries anyway. It doesn’t work.

“Who put their hands on you?” Ethan demands because this, his bruised throat, is not nothing. Benji flinches.

Ethan takes a deep breath. _Gentle._ He needs to set aside his emotions and approach this gently. Added stress is the last thing Benji needs right now. 

“You don’t need to give me the play-by-play if you don’t want to,” he says. “All I need to know is if you’re in danger.”

Benji is quiet for a moment. He considers deflecting, or maybe just avoiding this conversation altogether, just as he has for the last day and a half, but he’s tired. He's so damn tired. Ethan waits patiently. 

“Ilsa found the bomb,” he finally says. “It was hidden in a cabin. We thought it would be in the tents, but it wasn’t. They knew we’d waste time looking there first…

“Lane was ready for her, used her to trap me, and then he -,” Benji’s voice cracks, the memory still so fresh in his mind that it hurts to recall. 

“We scrapped,” he says after a pause. “He, uh, got his hands ‘round my neck for a minute.”

Ethan shakes his head, his eyes falling once again on Benji’s neck. He lifts Benji’s chin gently with his fingers, examining the marks more closely. Ligature marks underneath the bruises, but no fingerprints. He considers leaving it instead of prompting Benji for the truth, but then Benji swallows hard.

  
“He had a rope,” Benji says.

Ethan can’t breathe. He doesn’t want to think about a rope anywhere _near_ Benji’s throat, let alone around it, but now he can’t stop. Benji opens his mouth to say more, though he doesn’t really need to. Ethan can see it all in his head.

_Lane kicks, brings Benji to his knees, a knee in his stomach forcing him to the floor, pressing a length rope into his windpipe until he’s too weak to struggle..._

Benji is still talking. 

“He, well. He, uh, he fashioned a noose -“

“A _noose?!_ ”

“ - and then he...he snuck up on me.”

He’s being deliberately vague, Ethan knows, but his imagination doesn’t need details to produce horrific imagery. 

_Benji, limp and broken and hanging from the ceiling and his mouth is open but there’s no breath, no  breath means no heartbeat, his neck is broken and he’s dead, dead, dead -_

He wants to shush Benji, he doesn’t want to hear anything else, his brain is screaming no more, please, no more, but his mouth moves on its own. “And then?”

“I don’t really remember,” he admits honestly. The only clear memory after he’d lost his footing was fire in his chest, in his head, his lungs and brain begging him for air until his vision faded to black. “I woke up on the floor and I could breathe again.”

Benji had woken up. Benji started breathing again and woke up, of course he did, he’s standing right here. Still, Ethan can’t pull his mind from the implications of that, the fact that Benji had lost consciousness in the first place, had been so perilously close to being lost forever...he can’t even begin to process that. He doesn’t want to try.

“When were you going to tell me?” Ethan asks. Benji opens his mouth, then closes it without saying anything. “Were you going to tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says softly, meeting Ethan’s eyes once more. He hates how panicked he still is, even though it’s over and they survived. “It’s not your job to worry about me.”

“It’s not your job to decide what I worry about,” Ethan chides without any real heat. “Have you been looked at? Have you had trouble breathing?

He’s still holding Benji’s chin, scanning his face and throat to try and memorize every bruise and mark on his skin that doesn’t belong there. Benji takes Ethan’s hand in his own, his lips brushing over Ethan’s knuckles. There’s nowhere to comfortably rest their hands, but he doesn’t let go.

“I’m okay,” he says. “I’m alright now, even got some painkillers for my trouble.”

Ethan makes a pained noise in the back of his throat, clutches Benji’s hand. “You’ll tell me if you’re not, though.”

Benji smiles tightly. It’s not totally forced, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course.”

“Benji,” Ethan says, reaching once again for Benji’s cheek with his free hand, stroking his cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. “God, Benji, I’m sorry.” 

How many times had he promised to keep him safe? Held him, wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close in the middle of the night, whispered that Lane would never hurt him, never touch him again? How many promises has he broken? He’s failed Benji not once, but for every one of those promises he’s ever made. The reality of it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Ethan,” Benji says firmly. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“...let anything happen to me,” Benji finishes with him, shaking his head. “Ethan, you had no way of knowing what would happen.”

Benji is right, Ethan knows he is, but-

“You had a job to do,” Benji continues, taking his protective guilt in stride. “I did, too. If we hadn’t done them, neither of us would be here anyway.”

_That’s the job._

“I know,” Ethan says. “I know, I just-.”  _It’s not worth you,_ he thinks _. None of this is worth you._

Benji leans over him, presses a kiss to his forehead. He wants to wrap his arms around Benji and keep him here forever, next to him and safe, but his ribs won’t allow that. He settles for taking him gently by the shoulders as he pulls away. 

“Wait. Listen to me,” he says. This is important. Benji needs to hear this. He needs understand it. “Please don’t hide things from me for my sake, Benj. Please.” 

Benji looks pained. “Ethan,” he says. Ethan shakes his head. 

“I’m not finished. I don’t care how much worse off you think I am, alright?”

Ethan pauses. Benji nods.

“I need to know that you’re okay,” he continues. “And if you don’t want to talk about it then that’s fine, but Benji, I need to know that you’re okay. Always.”

They stay like that for another moment, neither of them breaking eye contact, until Benji’s expression softens and he nods again. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Ethan whispers, gently tugging Benji in for the first proper kiss they’ve shared in days.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I've been trying to finish this for two weeks, since I saw the movie. I am still shook. I have entire folders of half-finished fics for these two, and god, I need to finish some of them. I love these two with all my heart.


End file.
